Will Young: I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

“I have a bit of a funny thing with Rihanna. I’m a bit of a feminist and I think what Rihanna represents is not necessarily the best thing.
“She’s overtly sexual. And it’s so, ‘I’m an object and oh there’s another women in my video, are we lesbians, I’m not sure!’ It’s so disparaging towards women.
“Everyone plays the game, but it’s not good enough. It’s not empowering.
“I think as a woman Lady Gaga is far more interesting.”

Will Young - arguably Britain's most respected public intellectual since Bertrand Russell - gives his highly honed thoughts on the great "sexy videos" and fauxmosexuality debates during a discussion on that salon du nos jours The Jo Whiley Music Show.
This month your sex-hysterical and censorship-bonkers government announced it wants record companies to introduce an age ratings system for music videos.

Mike Stock: Pop As Pornography

"Pop music in this country is almost completely dominated by American acts who have taken sexualised imagery, dance moves and lyrical content way beyond the limits of decency.
"As far as music is concerned, it has been a slow but unmistakable descent into pornography. Why? Because it's easy. Put some sexualised dancing and scantily-clad females in the video, and get it on the box. Job done..."
"Bring back pop music for young people, expose it on television and drive all this sexually explicit trash back to the stone age where it belongs."

80s has-been Mike Stock wades into the debate du jour with an open letter to Ofcom.
Hardly surprising - Mr Stock (of him, Aitken & Waterman fame) kickstarted this silly "debate" last August with this bizarre outburst;
"These days you can't watch modern stars - like Britney Spears or Lady Gaga - with a two-year-old.
"Ninety-nine per cent of the charts is R 'n' B and 99 per cent of that is soft pornography."
At the risk of repeating myself, here's what I wrote at the time explaining why Mike "Sam Fox" Stock is a hypocrite, a wanker, a fucktard and a total and utter bell-end.
The Mirror's report has just gone online and is but of course illustrated with a photo of Rihanna's crotch and two of Lady Gaga in a see-through dress.
Fagburn's favourite line?
"Stock singled out Nicole Scherzinger's performance on Britain's Got Talent (watch it in the video player below)..."
Please accept their sincerest hypocrisy.
Fuck off Mirror!
Fuck off Mike!

• Purely by happenchance Mike Stock's The Go! Go! Go! Show - "The show 4 kids" - opens at London's Garrick Theatre next month. It sounds like an absolute pile of shit.

The Daily Mail Vs Ofcom: TVOD

Brilliant column by Charlie Brooker in The Guardian today, as per.
'If the Daily Mail is so worried about the sexualisation of children, all they have to do is hit 'delete'
'Starlets and sex, sex and starlets – all of it on plain view on the Daily Mail website which, to the best of my knowledge, has no age restrictions in place'
"Last year, outraged by Christina Aguilera and Rihanna's raunchy pre-watershed dancing on The X Factor, [The Daily Mail] ran a fuming article accompanied by shocking pictures of the most extreme bits, which helped fuel thousands of complaints.
"Later, Ofcom agreed that the routines were 'at the limit of acceptability', but went on to say the images in the Mail article were 'significantly more graphic and close-up than the material broadcast and had been taken from a different angle to the TV cameras... Readers would have been left with the impression that the programme contained significantly more graphic material than had actually been broadcast'..."
So the Mail are hypocrites - who knew?
And yes, the piece is fucking hilarious.
No wonder it's the (second) most popular story on The Guardian website right now.
However Steve Hewlett has the sinister story that lies behind this story over in MediaGuardian today;
'Why the Daily Mail has it in for Ofcom'
"This ongoing spat boils down to the Mail's hostility to regulation – something the paper may receive more of from the PCC"
In fine, the Mail wants Ofcom gone as it fears regulation and restrictions of its own online video content.
Oops!

• A very interesting recent post on The Media Blog about how the Mail tries to increase traffic to its website by running endless stories about American celebrities; 'Rihanna or the Queen: Who does the Daily Mail prefer?'

Update: Christopher Woolard from Ofcom writes for MediaGuardian on the Bailey Report and the TV watershed...

Daily Star: Every Man And Woman Is A Star

Surprisingly there was nothing for Fagburn to comment on in today's Daily Star Sunday, but I was struck by this delightful photo of Umbrella-singing Rihanna with James Ingham, the Star's celeb gossip columnist, taken backstage at a recording of the Graham Norton Show, no less.
He couldn't look more gay if he had a cock in his mouth.
I expect young Mr Ingham is the sort of chap who often spends his weekends in Vauxhall, don't you?